Archives for December 2010

We visited my parents today. We spent about an hour with them. After we left my parent’s apartment, we were walking down the hall where a couple was sitting. As we walked past, Eliz greeted them. We didn’t know them, but everyone there usually says ‘hello’ as you pass them by. After we were 15 or 20 feet down the hall, the guy says to the women, “Did you see that guy looking down?” He insinuated that I couldn’t be bothered to look up.

Generally, I walk behind Eliz in the halls there because they are a little narrow to walk side by side and I don’t want to walk into any one. I look down and concentrate on Eliz shoes so I don’t run into her. I’ve found in the past, if I look straight ahead, I run into her if she stops or slows down when there are other people in the hall that may be blocking our way.

That guy’s comments irritated me. Obviously, I look fairly normal, so there is no way he would know that I’ve got sight issues. He made the comments after he thought we were far enough away that we wouldn’t hear them. I heard them and didn’t appreciate them. Am I too sensitive? Probably. I try so hard to be normal that when someone makes a comment like that it gets under my skin.

This is my last post for 2010. Okay, stop cheering, there’ll be more in 2011. Jacob has gone to his friend Andrew’s for the night and Jane has a couple friends here to ring in 2011. Eliz and I have the Veuve Clicquot chilled and a couple of movies to watch. I’d like to wish all of you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011!

I’d been looking forward to today for the past dozen days. Back on 10 Dec, I went to my retina doc, who, as previously mentioned, noticed three things that he thought were causing my vision to be worse than it had been. Two of three “issues” were cornea related, while one was retina related (and not correctable.) Today, I had an appointment with my cornea doc, Dr. Ayres.

As I was getting out of the shower, I heard the phone ring. Jacob answered it downstairs. Since he didn’t come up to mention the call, I figured it wasn’t for me. Minutes later, after taking my morning eye drop, Jake came in and told me my mom called. He went on to tell me that my mom said my dad was having shortness of breath and chest discomfort and they were going to the hospital. I sat back on the bed and thought about canceling my appointment. Since my mom didn’t ask to get me on the phone, I assumed it was a precautionary trip to the hospital (I later found out my dad didn’t want to go to the hospital, but since he mentioned chest pain, the Maris Grove staff wouldn’t take no for an answer.) I tried to reach my mom on her mobile, but didn’t get an answer. I felt selfish, but I decided I’d keep my doctor’s appointment.

We arrived early for my 9.45 appointment (seven minutes is early for us…) After we checked in, Eliz tried to call my mom. She got the voicemail (and knowing my mom can barely make and receive calls, didn’t leave a message. A minute or two later, Eliz’s phone rang and she handed the phone to me since she needed some insurance info for the receptionist. It was my mom. I spoke to her and then my dad. My mom told me what was going on. My dad told me, “Don’t count the money yet.” At that point, I felt I made the right decision to go to my appointment.

A few minutes later, I went back into (Eye) Pod 1. I was able to read the L (but not the S) on the SL line (which is the 20/200 line.) Dr. Ayres came in a few minutes later. He asked how things were going and I told him about my appointment 12 days earlier with Dr. Garg. He seemed to get defensive when I told him what Dr. Garg said. Dr. Ayres then had a look at both eyes. He started on the right one and quickly moved on to the left after saying, “That one is trash.” This I already knew. I haven’t seen anything but light with that eye since the last century… After he looked at the left eye he told me that it looked pretty similar as previous visits.

He said the transplant looked good, though was less than perfect. (It’s from a 69 year old donor and I’ve had it for two years.) He didn’t see signs of rejection. He said he could do another transplant if I wanted, but he didn’t think it could be too much better. The downside was too steep for me, so we’ll revisit that at a later date. Dr. Ayres also noticed a bit of haze behind the lens implanted in the cataract extraction in April of this year. It’s called posterior capsule opacity. It can be dealt with doing a procedure called YAG laser capsulotomy. He said there is very little downside to this, so I am scheduled to have this done on 20 January. I’m not sure if this counts as my 16th surgery or not…

Once we finished up with my appointment, we headed down Route 1 to Riddle Hospital to see my dad. We spent about three hours with him. The cardiologist met with all of us and said he didn’t think the problem was a heart issue. After running Jane to a friends for a birthday party and a trip to Newark DE to pick up a small order, we returned to Riddle at 5.15. We visited with my dad for about 45 minutes and then took my mom home, stopping for dinner on the way (she treated us to Ruby’s Diner.) My dad was tired and seemed to want us to go. Hopefully he gets some rest and is able to go home tomorrow.

Todays delivery schedule took us into Wilmington with a styling chair and wall-mount workstation. We got a late start since we had quite a few orders to box up. (Besides selling on our site ForYourSalon.com, we also sell on Amazon.com as, wait for it, ForYourSalon — they won’t let us add the dot com since it might take traffic directly to our site.) We also had to head to Newark, DE to pick up our Clairol order. We love going down there, because we usually stop at Cheeseburger in Paradise to eat. Time was tight after we picked up the order, but we stopped for lunch (it was 4.30, but neither Eliz or I had time for lunch earlier.)

After placing our order, I wanted to go to the Men’s Room. Since we’ve been there more than a handful of times, I know where the bathrooms are located. At the time we were there today it wasn’t very busy, so I was pretty confident I could make it there without walking into someone even though we were on the other side of the restaurant. I verified with Eliz how I should walk over there and then proceeded to make my way there. When I arrived at the bathrooms, I looked at both doors. As I mentioned in my last post, my eyes have been extra sucky for awhile, so I couldn’t make out the words on the door. One door seemed to have four letters, while the other door had more. Neither looked like Men or Women.

Frustrated, I walked back to our table. I told Eliz I didn’t know which bathroom to go in (literally.) She had to walk back over there with me and point me into the correct bathroom. I was embarrassed. I asked Eliz what it said on the door. She said Kane was on the door. WTF is Kane? How ’bout putting the man stick figure on the door? It didn’t help that I was hungry…

I brought this up because I read a blog entry the other day on Jalapenos in the Oatmeal titled In the Land of Pretend. In the post, Jeff Flodin writes about how he pretends to do things to look busy or feel important. I don’t think I’m like that. I just don’t want to look out of place or feel stupid. Today it was both.

In case you’re wondering, Eliz had a burger with bacon, honey mustard and fries, while I had the Parrot Beach salmon with broccoli and rice. YUM!